Inkblots
by Eliana Rampage
Summary: A certain Watchmen is whisked away to an alternate reality where he meets his match- an unlikely individual who seeks what is beneath the mask...but will she succeed?


3/24/09

Inkblots; First attempt

_Chapter One_

Although she was sitting, the girl was anything but stoic. Hell, she was a Mexican jumping bean. Livewire. Handle with caution. The tears had long since dried, but like saltwater residue, pieces of angry froth remained. The surroundings seemed to lurch in dismay; the park bench shrunk away from her very body, electric and writhing. Her left hand cut into a black leather-bound journal as a maddened doctor would perform open heart surgery.

_3/28/09_

_You think I am blind. Held to the ground through roots of LSD and madness. You are the cynics, the snide, nasty dogs that snarl and bark into the blacks of night's eyes. I am manifest destiny and i scare you. I am your creator _

_Your fate_

_And you'll never know until the black pearly gates greet you_

_your pumice stuffed faces graze the dirt_

_you'll scream_

_scream_

_barely verbalized questions_

_for your mouth is covered in blood_

_dripping and oozing out from every orifice _

_in your existence_

_you are meager and I put the end in death._

The handwriting could barely be considered just that- it consisted of what her parents and teachers had deemed "chicken scratches" since childhood. It became a sort of insignia; a secret code no one else could truly understand- the journal never needed a lock. _You are meager and I put the end in death._ And the last stream of writing dripped out, coming to a gradual stop. Finally, she looked up from the bloody page and watched as the night shape-shifted around her. The world she left earlier that afternoon was an entirely different realm from the one she was now gazing at.

_Earlier, the Commons were bustling with happy, naïve humanity; joggers running aimlessly through the streets. I sat here and watched them. I observed. The victim, the justification of their means. Now, I am surrounded in darkness and I revel in its silence. Comforting. Strangely civilized._

"What am I turning into?" the still-life around her did not offer a response. Her voice was cracked, hoarse and bleeding phlegm from hours of anxiety and neurosis. Boston was asleep, and she was not. Sleep was not a luxury, and she refused to recall the times when it had been, _if _it ever was.

_Past and future are irrelevant, so long as they are not occurring. The present is inescapable. _

"I am inertia." she whispered, the cracks in her voice intensifying like caked dirt in the heat of drought. Her swollen eyes hesitantly rose to the smarmy, dead branches of the shrubbery around her. To her, it was a mirror. A reflection of memories that winter graciously brought her every year as it stabbed her superego into the dust. Every beating and nightmare flooded in with the snowflakes, and she remembered, finding solace in the wooden embrace of this very bench. Opening journal after journal, page after page, devouring and dissecting words. Systematically, she took apart her brain. Day after day. Monotony in its purest form.

_At the age of 24, I am a walking, living clock; chiming every 15 minutes, perceiving time, living time, breathing time. Everything is dying around me and I remain an antique in a China shop, eternally rotting at the peak of my health. I am fallible yet immortal…_

She fingered the front of the journal, although the cover was hanging on by a bare few threads. It was the one thing her mother ever gave her, and the only physical memory of her biological family. Everything else…fragmented memories. She'd been living in the slums with Misery herself for years, living under the rule of powers she could not escape. Constantly under the shadow of religious fundamentalism she never understood.

_Being an American living under the shackles of insane Middle Eastern cultists, I am ironically the minority. Amazing how my 'family' sacrificed me to these..pigs. am I truly that replaceable? That useless.._

Of course, they'd be wondering where she is by now; she had a curfew, and as always, she broke it. She would endure the pain; _nothing overrides freedom,_ _EVER._

At 2:30 AM, her eyes were sharp and fierce; fox-like. She vaguely remembers someone telling her that. She remembers the pleasure, but distances herself from the thoughts like hibernating animals that shy away from the cold; _look, but do not touch. Observe. Although thoughts are from the past, they are alive. They are haunted, and they will bite. _

She rose, her slim figure shaded by the cover of darkness as she departed from her sanctuary and into the night. The cops were stupid and oblivious- she had never been caught wandering the commons after Midnight, and doubted she ever would. The Night, combined with the luxury of Nature was her element. She padded through the half-dead grass, past armies of trees that were still incubating, waiting to be reborn. Winter was unforgiving this year- when the snow finally thawed, the frozen temperatures were relentless. In fact, this late March night was one of the first she could stroll outside without shivering epileptically.

She wasn't looking at what lay ahead of her- her feet served as her eyes, dancing across the cool earth like wingless doves, lacing intricate patterns upon its surface. Yes, she was free for the last few minutes of her existence this evening, until retiring to her quarters in Hell, anticipating the next time she could return to her personal Garden of Eden. Until then, she reveled in her final moments. Inhaling the scents of the night, becoming one with everything…

Until she walked right in to him, staring upon the face of death.


End file.
